a feminist writes, rants, remembers

‘Scuze me — White Comedy? Your racism is showing. Again.

Now — which pictured baby would you name “most likely to have a joke about it getting sexually humiliated and assaulted appear as the key element in a new comedy already heralded as potentially ‘the next Seinfeld‘ and executive-produced by a woman lauded for her outspoken feminism“?

[Jeopardy theme music plays briefly.]

If you guessed the Black girlchild in the lavender playsuit, congrats! we have a winner!

The Deets of Alice’s Frustration

“Difficult People” is a comedy that premiered on Hulu just a few weeks ago. Executive-produced by Amy Poehler — yes, that Amy Poehler — the series stars Julie Klausner (who is also the show’s creator, producer, and writer) and Billy Eincher as NY comedians named “Julie” and “Billy” who both have a penchant for tasteless humor. That “the more taboo the target, the better!”-style of joking.

Get it??! The main characters are just teeeeerrrrrible. (The show is called “Difficult People,” after all.)

Even with only half-paying attention to the first episode, I still noted drive-by snark directed towards: hipsters, fat people, disabled people, gay people, old people, cancer patients, parents of young children, Jews — and all the stick-in-the-mud characters who don’t see humor in such outrageous statements.

Oh. And then there’s this:

At four minutes into the pilot, we get the full hook for a joke about how teeeeerrrrrible Twitter users are, which provides the running gag for the rest of the episode: people tweeting outrageously mean things to Julie in response to an outrageously tasteless joke she herself had tweeted earlier.

I know meta jokes. I laugh at meta jokes. Meta joking is a friend of mine. A piss-baby tweet is not a meta joke.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right up-front: in context, it’s quite clear that the intended target of this joke are people — like me — who take offense at “jokes” clearly designed to be outrageousabout things like, say, the rape and degrading sexual assault of a toddler. (A Black girlbaby toddler, to be precise, which I’ll come back to.)

We are in prime “ironic racism/hipster sexism” territory, where joke’s on you to anyone who responds (and on social media, no less!) with serious anger. We are being trolled.

I get it.

In fact, here’s the full context. See if you can spot it too:

Julie [looking at her smartphone]: Uh-oh.

Friend: What?

Julie: I tweeted something about Blue Ivy earlier, and now the Internet’s being really mean to me. ‘Unfollow. Kill yourself.’ From @SpinClassAddict91. Oh god, that’s probably the year she was born!

Friend: What was the joke?

Julie: ‘I can’t wait for Blue Ivy to be old enough so R Kelly can piss on her.’

Friend: Aaah.

Julie: I hate this! I hate fighting with people! I just like saying something crazy and then leaving the room. Unless people like what I say, and then I stay in the room. […] I’m gonna delete this piss-baby tweet.

“There’s another visual gag at the end that shows the joke is clearly on Julie’s ignorance. Still, the Twitter criticism continues as some people don’t understand why the line even made it into the script in the first place.”

We understand the line.

We just also find it shitty, sexist, racist — and in-no-way funny.

In fact, the only thing watching the whole episode convinced me of is that, with or without this line, “Difficult People” is a show fully committed to its racism.

“JK!” is not a Get Out of Jail Free! card. That is, I mean…do you have a Whiteness Race Card to play with it?

Going by the pilot, “Difficult People” is an extremely white show. This despite casting the Academy Award-nominated Gabourey Sidibe. (Hers is an excruciatingly underutilized role — not even accorded the “sassy Black best friend” position, Sidibe is relegated to playing the “sassy Black best friend of the sassy gay best friend.”)

Race remains an unmentioned elephant in the room, with Blackness one of the only identity categories not explicitly named and mocked by the central characters. Instead, Blackness is mocked implicitly: this tweet about a [known-to-be Black] man preying on a [known-to-be Black] child, which leads to the pubic shaming of the white woman who wrote it, evokes not only the trope of “humorless feminists getting their panties in a twist over rape jokes” but also the public shaming of Justine Sacco, the white PR exec who lost her job after tweeting “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

“I’m not a shitty person. I just play a shitty person on TV.”

The fact that the line clearly targets Tweeters and their flame wars means that any harm done to a little Black girl is ancillary to poking a stick at white people with Twitter accounts and the tendency to get into a huff.

She’s just collateral damage.

And through that little Black girl (who is a real person, let’s be clear), laughter was directed at all of R Kelly’s victims, who are also real people — and who have already had far more harm done to them than my mind can even contain, on most days.

Through her, laughter was directed at all the other little Black girls, who collectively make up one of the most vulnerable populations in our society.

At all Black girls and women, who already bear the burden — historical and present-day — of extreme, hyper-sexualized depictions in media and pop culture and the brutality such imagery invites and excuses.

While I may not be overly concerned that any direct, measurable harm was done, in this instance, to Blue Ivy herself (who likely neither saw the show nor would have understood, if she had, and who has fierce parents that have been tackling ish like this directed against their daughter since her birth), I think it’s critical to understand this “joke about tweeting” — in particular, its reliance on Black girls’ victimization as mere mechanism for its humor — within the broader context of US culture. This is just one more example of the cultural illegibility of Black children as children, of Black victims as victims, of blackgirl vulnerability as vulnerability.

It ain’t the first time. When the hell will it be the last?

Who will arrive first: Godot or the White Feminists? Your betting booth is now open.

In 2013, 9yo Quvenzhané Wallis became the youngest actress ever nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress, for her performance as Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild.

She attended the Academy Awards ceremony carrying a puppy-wearing-a-tutu purse.

She was perfect.

She is perfect.

I hope she remembers only the magical parts about that night. Some of us remember a few other things.

Like how host Seth Myers quipped about Wallis, as she sat in the audience: “to give you an idea of how young she is, it’ll be 16 years before she’s too young for [George] Clooney” to date.

And how @TheOnion tweeted out its own, truly reprehensible “joke” sexualizing the young actress: “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013”

And those of us involved in feminist blogging that year remember — or we certainly should remember — how white feminists failed to defend Wallis or to support the Black feminists calling out these jokes for the harm they caused and perpetuated. (For an overview of how things played out, as well as links to articles and blog posts written at the time, see Jessica Luther’s comprehensive piece over at Shakesville.)

The lowest point, to my mind, came courtesy of the writers white-splaining how they personally ‘don’t mind being called a “c**t” — so lighten up already!’ This week’s “sheesh! it’s just a joke about distasteful people!”responses brought me right back.

Having watched the pilot episode in its entirety now — and having read numerous responses in mainstream media, with their frequent references to how “stirred up the Beyhive is” (a term for Beyoncé’s ardent fan base) — I’m not waiting any more. Certainly not for any apology from Poehler, advocate for women’s issues and co-founder of Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, a web-based community that “seeks to help future women channel their intelligence, imagination, and curiosity into a drive to be their weird and wonderful selves.”

It’s clear to me that not only was this “joke” deliberately made — at the expense of Black girls’ dignity and rape victims’ humanity — but that it was made intentionally to provoke exactly the reaction it has received. After all, nothing says “great press” for the summer release of a web-delivered TV show like a “stirred-up Beyhive”!

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One theory of comedy holds that it’s funny when you say the unsayable. I sometimes think that from that a bunch of people who aren’t particularly funny just look for transgressive things to say and then congratulate themselves on their bravery. And humor. Yuck.

Yup. Definitely a tendency in some corners to confuse “unsayable…by all but the brave and transgressive” with “unsayable…by everyone who chooses not to be an a-hole.” Yuck indeed!
Thanks for you comment. 🙂

Great unpacking of this issue. I appreciate that Poehler, of whom I am a fan, is also being called to task for her blindspots and people are not just doing a comedy is comedy shrug. Have not seen her response to people’s reactions about the Blue Ivy “joke.”

I will never understand the culture that demands to be able to make jokes about anything. I’m with you. Real comedy means some sort of decorum. If you can’t be funny without taking pot-shots about inexcusable things, then you’re not funny to begin with. It has nothing to do with the audience. I shared this post.

WordPress refused to post this comment last night. I hope it’s not the universe trying to protect me from making a horse’s behind of myself again.

Yeah, what’s up with WordPress the last few days? Getting a bit hinky there, WP!

For me, comedy only works well when it’s “punching up, not down,” as the saying goes. When it doesn’t make punchlines at the expense of the vulnerable, for the comfort of the powerful. Because then the comic is nothing but a bully with a mic and an audience.

See hearing someone be hurtful to a child assures I will not watch it ever. It does the opposite in my case. I really can not stand people who use kids for a punch line. Thank you for calling them out here. It is confusing because while I have never gotten her humor, Amy Poehler you wouldn’t think she would allow this on something she worked on.